Senate to investigate Morse’s per diem

The Senate will investigate an ethics complaint filed against Majority Leader John Morse over per diem he collected in 2009.

Senate President Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, announced the investigation this morning to the entire Senate.

“This complaint is bogus but a complaint does need to be investigated so let’s go,” said Morse, D-Colorado Springs.

The complaint[2] was filed by Stephanie Cegielski, executive director of the Colorado Government Accountability Project, which has reviewed per diem filings for legislative leaders in both parties.

She said Morse requested reimbursement far more than other lawmaker in leadership.

The lawmakers appointed to the ethics committee are Democrats Morgan Carroll, Bob Bacon and Pat Steadman, and Republicans Nancy Spence and Shawn Mitchell.

All lawmakers are eligible to collect per diem during the 120-day legislative session. Morse collected the maximum 120 days allowed.

Those in leadership are eligible to charge $99 a day in the off-session for days they worked, and that is the issue the complaint is based on. Morse in 2009 billed for 211 days, Shaffer for leadership pay for 143 days.

(Cegielski plans to filed an amended complaint with the president after The Denver Post pointed out the original complaint contains conflicting data about the number of days billed for leadership per diem. She said the correct number is 211.)

Morse said he did legislative work for every day he claimed even though his calendar indicated he also had personal events. He said he could have blacked out the personal events when he submitted his calendar to the Colorado Government Accountability Project as requested.

“Then they would have thought I was hiding something so I released everything,” he said.

In her letter to Shaffer, Cegielski said Morse charged for days he was at conferences in San Diego and San Francisco and a ‘China envoy’ trip in November to Beijing.

” … these entries raise ethical concerns about what type of leadership work was being conducted while traveling … ,” she said.

Several conservative blogs have blistered Morse since his per diem figures were released, often comparing him to Republican Rep. Joe Stengel of Littleton, who claimed per diem in 2005 on days when he was taking the bar exam, vacationing in Hawaii and campaigning against Referendum C & D.

Stengel had billed leadership per diem for 240 out of 247 non-session days. No one else in leadership came close.

In her letter, Cegielski noted that an ethics committee investigation of Stengel’s per diem found that “the number of days for which Representative Stengel claimed per diem was excessive and significantly more than claimed by members of Leadership during the same interim or than historically claimed by members of Leadership during previous interim….”

“One phone call in a day does not constitute a day’s work,” the committee concluded, although it voted 3-2 to dismiss the complaint against Stengel.

Stengel initially said he deserved every penny because he worked “24/7″ but later he conceded he used “bad judgment” and reimbursed the state for a week in Hawaii and two days spent taking the bar exam.

He resigned his post as minority leader shortly after he was caught lying to then Speaker Andrew Romanoff and his fellow caucus members about a Rocky Mountain News story. The story quoted Stengel as saying Romanoff gave him permission to bill per diem during the Hawaii trip.

Romanoff said when confronted Stengel about that statement, which was false, Stengel claimed the Rocky had fabricated that and other quotes in the story, but a digital tape-recording of his interview showed he was quoted accurately, word for word.

In an unrelated interview last year, Shaffer told The Denver Post he has always been careful about billing for leadership per diem because of what happened with Stengel.

Republicans and Democrats alike were critical of the days Stengel billed. “It stretches the limit of credibility,” Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, said at the time.

The Colorado Government Accountability Project[3] bills itself as a group “ensuring public official compliance with Colorado law and holding them accountable for unethical and illegal behavior.” It says it is nonpartisan but most of the records its requests are aimed at Democrats or left-leaning groups.

According to Cegielski’s bio, she has worked in former Gov. Bill Owens’ legal counsel office and for former secretaries of state Gigi Dennis, Mike Coffman and Bernie Buescher. According to the Colorado Statesman[4], Cegielski started the Accountability Project after she left Beuscher’s office and one of the group’s actions was to file an open records request for his calendar.

She declined last year to tell The Denver Post who is funding the group.